Stanbic Jazz Festival: Who next after Bob James?
After an enthralling night of good music, jazz that is, from a legend of the music and of the genre, this reporter asked one of the event’s organisers at the lobby of the Accra International Conference Centre (AICC) who else they would bring to Ghana for such a performance last Sunday night.
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“If you bring down an artiste of the calibre of Bob James, you set the bar too high for yourself and you have to look hard and work even harder to ensure that whoever comes after him would not douse the fire he lit over the three-day festival,” he managed to say while looking at the ceiling as though he could command the next act from above.
Indeed Bob James had set the main auditorium of the AICC on fire with one after another of good music from his piano. After all, he is the two times Grammy award winning pianist whose works have been sampled by many musicians across different genres.
Patrons, who obviously were jazz lovers, knew who they were having the date with and therefore expected nothing short of a spectacular performance from the artiste who had come all the way from America to play for them.
This year’s Stanbic Ghana Jazz Festival was a three-day affair at the AICC, which was climaxed with that final concert by James and what a finale it was for those who had waited to see his performance live on stage in Accra.
As it turned out, Bob James sat behind his piano and doled out a good number of hits. One after another from different albums over many years. There were many of the songs he performed that the audience knew and sang or hummed along, bobbed their heads or moved in their chairs to.
He did not hold back any of his good songs during the almost two hours of quality jazz performance. Even when he had completed his show there were many people in the audience who were still seated and obviously wanted more.
Bob James performed all his songs on the night with an amazingly good drummer in Jimmy Branly as well as a big bassist in Carlitos Del Puerto. On some, indeed many, of the performances the band was joined by saxophonist Tom Braxton to perform on the night.
Except that Braxton on the night proved to be more than just a sax man and rather an almost complete woodwind instrumentalists. Depending on which song James and the band were performing, Braxton would use a flute, saxophone or clarinet to bring out the essence of the song.
Before James and the band would mount the stage, Braxton had done a brilliant job with performing some of his songs and a lot of which the audience seemed to know. He was impressed when the audience hummed and sang along with him when he called it to.
Preceding Braxton and Bob James’ performances were some of the local artistes on the bill including Akablay and his band as well as the Ayisah–Dey Band. Indeed the entire festival was a blend of local and foreign music served to those who have good appetite for jazz music.
It gave an opportunity to a number of local artistes and groups to showcase their talent on the same stage as such legends as James and Braxton. Akablay and his band, Steve Bedi (saxophonist), Bernard Ayisah (drummer) and Victor Dey (pianist), Les Femmes (all- female band), Kyekyeku (guitarist) and Stephanie Benson (vocalist) were but a few of the Ghanaian acts that showed up at the event that took place at the Accra International Conference Centre from June 24- 26.
The head of Marketing and Communications at Stanbic Bank, Mawuko Afadzinu has been reported as saying that they are working to ensure that “the Stanbic Ghana Bank Jazz Festival gains recognition as a stop on the global jazz calendar by presenting top-flight musicians to the people of Ghana, bringing global legends and local icons together. We believe that getting the chance to play with legends will rub onto our indigenous artists and make them greater acts, thereby enhancing the “glocal” nature of the event,” he said.
Both Bob James and Tom Braxton lived up to the hype and delivered great performances at this year’s jazz festival. The local artistes would obviously have learnt a few tricks from these globally accomplished jazz greats.
The Stanbic Bank Jazz Festival was sponsored by Vodafone Business Solutions, Labadi Beach Hotel, Graphic Communications Group Limited, Joy FM, BFT and Citi FM.